Which graphic card is better?

[Pathfinder55]

I would like to know which one of these graphic cards is better.

ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB of GDDR3 memory or

e-GeForce FX 5500
I imagine that the Radeon one is better. Is it like twice as good or the same?

 

[flopticalcube]

Using mobile cards as a guide the Go 5600 gets a 3dMark03 of ~1900 whereas the Mobility 2600 (non-XT) gets ~7300. So about 4 times the speed.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile...rk-List.844.0.html?&or=&search=&sort=3dmark06

 

[Pathfinder55]

Thanks and those graphics cards will let you play better games right?

and your saying the Radeon one is better right?

 

[Pathfinder55]

Anyone know anything else?

 

[redraidermacman]

on benchmarks and in windows it shows up as an xt which would be good, because that one got a 12000 on 3dmark03 which is really good.... and once new drivers are released either before or when leopard is released it will be a very fast card, as it stands right now its a very good card and i have had no problems running anything in bootcamp although c&c3 for mac runs somewhay slowly sometimes...hopefully new drivers and more memory will help some of these things...

 

[HLdan]

Thanks and those graphics cards will let you play better games right?

and your saying the Radeon one is better right?

Um, could you please give a reason for the need for this info? Were you looking into getting an a new iMac? If so you don't have a choice or option for which graphics card you want. You will get the Mobility Radeon 2600XT or the 2400XT in the low end 20" model.
For gaming I play Bioshock just fine on mine on high settings but at 1200X960 resolution. Settings any higher will lose frame rates. Even better news I'm playing it in Vista so it should be better in XP although XP is not DX 10 capable.

 

[flopticalcube]

Thanks and those graphics cards will let you play better games right?

and your saying the Radeon one is better right?

The Mobility Radeon 2600XT in the iMac is one of the fastest mobile cards around, second only to the nVidia 8700m GT. My kids current machines have FX5500 and the iMac will smoke them. Look at it this way, you go from video settings all on the left (low) to all on the right (high). You go from 800X600 to 1680X1050 resolution and you will still get more frames per second. Smokin'.

 

[psonice]

The geforce fx 5x00 series were rubbish, I have one here. They run anything that needs pixel shader 2 stuff extremely slowly (and that would cover most recent games). Plus, the 5500 isn't even a fast part from that series. And it's 3 generations old, which is VERY old in terms of video cards.

The 2600xt on the other hand is brand new, has all the latest features, supports all the latest games, and is reasonably fast.

 

[Pathfinder55]

Um, could you please give a reason for the need for this info? Were you looking into getting an a new iMac? If so you don't have a choice or option for which graphics card you want. You will get the Mobility Radeon 2600XT or the 2400XT in the low end 20" model.
For gaming I play Bioshock just fine on mine on high settings but at 1200X960 resolution. Settings any higher will lose frame rates. Even better news I'm playing it in Vista so it should be better in XP although XP is not DX 10 capable.

Well I have a Dell right now with the GeForce in it. And my family is saying that macs arnt good for gaming. And I would use the iMac for gaming a little bit, and just wanted to see how good iMacs are for gaming. So I would really like to buy a new mac.

 

[psonice]

Well I have a Dell right now with the GeForce in it. And my family is saying that macs arnt good for gaming. And I would use the iMac for gaming a little bit, and just wanted to see how good iMacs are for gaming. So I would really like to buy a new mac.

There are two sides to this - osx, and macs.

Osx, yes, it has a tiny number of games compared to windows, most games are ports of pc games, and the game will usually run faster on a pc than a mac even if they both have the same hardware.

However, if you buy a mac and install windows on it, it'll be just another PC with windows, and will have the full range of windows games. The video card, processor etc. are pretty standard PC parts. The bits in an imac are pretty good, so it'll be like having a new, fast PC when it comes to games.

 

[AlexisV]

Get the 2600, not the 2400.

The Radeon is a decent GPU. Not spectacular, but certainly better than the numerous moaning posts on this forum would have us believe.